A day after "rescuing" three-year-old Hermione from her parents' business partners, who have been accused of kidnapping her, the UT police arrested the woman co-accused in the case from Panipat on Monday. She has been identified as 22-year-old Chinar.

Even as the main accused, Jagpal Beniwal, is at large, the city police chose to pat itself on the back claiming it had conducted a successful operation.

Chinar is a mother of a three-year-old girl. She is reportedly separated from her husband and works with Jagpal. "I have cradled her for all these days, and have never beaten her. I also told sir (Jagpal) that what he was doing was wrong," Chinar reportedly said when she was confronted by the girl's mother, Priya.

Chinar was arrested from Panipat by a team headed by Inspector Shri Prakash, SHO, Police Station Sector 3. "We got an information from a source that all the accused will be coming to the Panipat bus stand on Monday evening. We stationed ourselves there but only Chinar came and we arrested her," the inspector said.

On main accused Beniwal being on the run, UT SSP Naunihal Singh said: "Our first priority was to get the girl from the kidnappers. As we have recovered her, now the search is on for the accused." The SSP added that no ransom was paid. "We are calling it a successful operation as no money was given and we still managed to recover the child safely," the SSP said. On the time it took (six days) for the UT police to arrest the accused he said: "We do not measure our performance in days. Our priority was to save the child. We did not want to repeat the Khushpreet case."

In a rather curious explanation, the SSP further said: "We just fooled the main accused by telling him that we had handed the ransom money to one of his mediators. Once we made him believe that, he let the girl go." The SSP, however, did not explain how the accused, untraceable so far, could be fooled into believing that the ransom had been paid.

TERMS OF USE: The views expressed in comments published on indianexpress.com are those of the comment writer's alone. They do not represent the views or opinions of The Indian Express Group or its staff. Comments are automatically posted live; however, indianexpress.com reserves the right to take it down at any time. We also reserve the right not to publish comments that are abusive, obscene, inflammatory, derogatory or defamatory.